AMAZING STORY

Jared Bellan Decides to Trust God

By Christine McWorter
The 700 Club

CBN.com -“How do I stop using? How does a person that has a couple hundred people around him that buy drugs from him every day, just stop?”

It was a question that tortured Jared Bellan for years. He made $5000 a day selling drugs. He wanted to quit using them, but he was hopelessly addicted to heroin.

In the beginning, drug use wasn’t a prison for Jared, it was an escape. Living in a rural town was boring, and for Jared, marijuana was the perfect distraction. He started smoking when he was 13 years old. He eventually tried alcohol and later, cocaine. Then, when he was 17, a friend convinced him to start selling marijuana.

“Not only could I have a good time, but I could make money doing it. It was just about, ‘How high can I get? How much money can I make?’”

He thought he was living the good life. And it felt great – most of the time…

“Everything would be good during the day and during the time when I’d be going out and I thought I was having a good time, but it always hit me when I was going to sleep. It always hit me in the middle of the night. I just had this sense in my heart that there was lack of something in my life. There was a part of me that I knew that what I was doing was wrong.”

When he was 20, he started selling heroin. He also started using - a decision he regretted immediately. “I began to get addicted to heroin to such a point I couldn’t wake up without it. I was depressed and I was angry all the time. It got to the point where when I got involved with the heroin that I would do whatever it took to get money, to get drugs, to continue this cycle. It was frightening.”

Jared began dating a girl, and soon, she became pregnant. One day after making a drug deal, Jared and the girl were stopped by police. “I remember them ripping me out of the car and slamming me on the hood. And there was a cop pulling the bag of drugs out and sticking it in my face and saying, ‘Son, you are in a lot of trouble.’”

Police found almost 200 bags of heroin in Jared car. They immediately took him to jail.

“I laid there on a hard bed and I literally could not move. I had this urge to use drugs so bad, and I didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t no drugs. There wasn’t anything, and I just remember at that point feeling hopeless. I didn’t know who was going to help me and I didn’t know where I was going to go.”

After a few days, he made it through withdrawal. That’s when another inmate invited him to church.

“I remember hearing a man there. He was preaching about Jesus. He was talking about God restoring the years of our lives that we lost. Somebody gave me a Bible so I went back and I read Mathew 7:7. I just began to weep and I just thought, ‘Who is this God that I don’t know, that I personally did not like my whole life and didn’t want anything to do with?’ That night I just poured my heart out to Him and told Him how terrified I was, and put my trust in Him.”

The next morning, something had changed. “I didn’t have any desire to use drugs at all, and I just had this extreme amount of peace in my heart. And that next couple of weeks that I spent there in jail, I went to church 5 days a week. I remember locking myself away in my cell all day long and I’d read my Bible. I would listen to Christian radio. And everyone said, ‘What happened to Bellan?’ You know? ‘Where’s he at?’”

After about a month, Jared was released on bail. During this time, his ex-girlfriend had given birth and given up custody of the baby. Jared wanted to raise his son, but he still had to face the judge for sentencing. So he prayed to God. When he went to court, the judge decided to reduce his 2 to 5 year sentence to 6 months of probation.

Jared says he knows it was God who helped him quit drugs and start a new life with his son.

“I really began to develop a deep relationship with the Lord. And really began to just say ‘God, where do you want me to go? What do you want me to do?’ and ‘Lord I’m just going to trust You with everything I have.’”

He went to Bible college. Shortly after, he met and married Melissa. He says he is thankful for the way God changed his life.

“I’m just overwhelmed by, from somebody that went from a hard past and a rough life to experiencing a God that I never knew existed. And I’m just very thankful in my heart for all God’s done.”